“Are you working?” he asked, entering the suite.
She hesitated. The question meant, do you want to be left alone? Duncan was very understanding of a writer’s problems; if she said yes, she would cease to exist for him. “No,” she decided. “Can I get you anything? There’s time for coffee.”
“No, thanks,” he said. “How’s the work coming?”
“Not bad, thanks to you. I really struck ice with Buchi Tenmo.”
He grinned again at the spacer expression. Spacers didn’t give a damn for gold or diamonds or oiclass="underline" for them a new source of potable water was real wealth. She had picked up the idiom from him—and it seemed to please him that she had. “Yeah, she’s pretty amazing… when you can tell what the hell she’s talking about.”
“Yes, there is that. It’s like talking to an angel on psychedelics sometimes. Would you mind sitting in on the conversation once or twice? You’ve been talking with Stardancers a lot longer than I have.”
“Sure—but don’t expect that to help much. Buchi’s just different. Even for a Stardancer. The ones born that way, who’ve never breathed, are the weirdest… but the most interesting too, I think.”
A week ago, Rhea had asked Duncan how one got to know a Stardancer. She knew it could be done simply and easily, even from the surface of Terra—but how did one scrape up an acquaintance? It turned out Duncan was friendly with several Stardancers. Most spacers were. And one of his personal friends among Homo caelestis happened to be physically located near enough to the Shimizu to allow for something very like a face-to-face meeting… through Rhea’s own window. Duncan had made the introduction a few days earlier, then politely left them alone. “When would be good for you in the next few days?”
“Any time; when’s good for you?”
She thought about it—and suddenly realized that the search criterion with which she was examining her calendar was “times when Rand and Colly won’t be around.” That made perfect sense: the conversation would be confusing enough without distraction. Nonetheless it struck her all at once that she was making a date to be alone—or almost alone—with a handsome young man. One who, if she wasn’t misreading signals, was interested in her.
It’s for work, for heaven’s sake!
Yes… but is it prudent?
Oh, shut up. “How about tomorrow night, after twenty?”
He nodded. “Program loaded.”
There was a brief silence. Rhea felt compelled to break it. “So how are things with you?”
“Pretty good, actually. I made another piece last night, and it turned out well.”
Duncan’s hobby was vacuum-sculpture. To Rhea the artform seemed to consist of assembling ingredients in various combinations, exposing them suddenly to vacuum, and then taking credit for the weird and beautiful shapes chemistry caused to occur. But vacuum-sculpture could be very beautiful—and she had to admit that Duncan seemed to produce aesthetically pleasing results more often than chance could account for. Didn’t photographers throw out twenty prints and take credit for the perfect twenty-first? Come to think of it, wasn’t her own storage cluttered with drafts that hadn’t quite gelled?
“I’d like to see it,” she said politely.
“No problem. We’ll talk to Buchi from my place, then.”
She opened her mouth… and then closed it firmly. He was pointedly not looking in her direction.
“I thought I’d take Colly to the pool again,” he went on.
Rhea laughed. “You think you have a choice, huh?” The laugh sounded too loud in her ears. “She’s a born water baby. You couldn’t keep her out of the surf, back ho—…back in Provincetown. You know, I’ve always thought it’s ironic. As far back as history goes, the Paixaos have made their living on and from the sea—and my mother was the first one in the family that ever learned to swim. How could you spend all that time on the water and not know how to swim? Weren’t they scared?”
Duncan shrugged. “I’ve lived all my life in space—and I don’t know how to breathe vacuum.”
“But that’s not possible—and it is possible to learn to swim, and it doesn’t even take much time.”
“Look at it from your greatest grandfather Henry’s perspective,” he said. “Suppose you’re off the Grand Banks and the ship sinks. How much good does it do you to know how to swim?”
It occurred to Rhea that Duncan knew a lot more about her family than she knew about his. She was not normally so forthcoming; had he been making an effort to draw her out? She reviewed memory tape, and could not decide. “I guess. It still seems odd. Maybe we should ask Buchi to teach you how to breathe vacuum.”
And now I’ve drawn the conversation back to our rendezvous…
Colly appeared just then. How she could have spent five minutes dressing was something of a mystery, for she was dressed for the pool, in the ubiquitous guest robe and nothing else. Since so many nationalities and cultures mingled in the Shimizu, all guests conformed to a minimal nudity taboo in politeness to the less civilized nations; one did not jaunt down public corridors naked. But a guest robe was sufficient, and even those could be dispensed with once one reached the pool—or any other nonpublic location. “Hi, Duncan! Come on, let’s go!”
“Sorry to hold you up,” he said sarcastically, and made way so Colly could hug her mother goodbye.
As Rhea handed the child off to Duncan, their hands brushed briefly. Rhea had gotten used to casual touching in space, even from strangers; free-fall made it necessary in close quarters. But this touch she felt from her scalp to the soles of her feet. It seemed to her that he made it linger.
She was glad then for Colly’s eagerness to be in the water; the two headed for the door before the blush reached her cheeks.
I should have said yes when he asked if I was working.
In fact, she should be working. She took her keyboard from her pocket and unfolded it. Work would be a wonderful distraction from the trend her thoughts were taking.
Almost at once she found another distraction. The virtual screen that sprang into existence over the keyboard was preset to display her calendar as its boot document, so she wouldn’t start sinking into the warm fog if there was some imminent obligation scheduled. It showed the next thirty days, and the box for 5 February was highlighted—it leaped out of the screen at her, as it had been doing ever since she had highlighted it.
I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay here, was what she had thought when she first started work that morning. Now, perhaps because of what had just transpired, it came out, I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay married to Rand.
She entered her date with Duncan into the calendar, put the typewriter away again, and went to the window. She watched the majestically turning Earth for a measureless time, trying to put names on her feelings, and failing. They would not hold still long enough.
Finally she looked around her, as if to make sure she was alone… and checked her watch to make sure Rand was not due home… and spoke to her AI. “Maxwelclass="underline" window program ‘Home.’ ”